BERLIN: ASHER & CO., 13, UNTER DEN LINDEN. NEW YORK: C. SCRIBNER & CO., LEYPOLDT & HOLT. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. Hymns to the Virgin & Christ, The Parliament of Devils, and other Religious Poems, CHIEFLY FROM THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S LAMBETH MS. No. 853. EDITED BY FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL, M. A., TRIN. HALL, CAMB.; MEMBER OF COUNCIL OF THE PHILOLOGICAL PUBLISHED FOR THE EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY BY KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., 57 AND 59, LUDGATE HILL, E.C. 1867. PREFACE. AFTER telling Mrs. Gaskell one day a story for the truth of which I could not vouch, she said, with her beautiful bright smile, "Now I'm going to believe that, whether it's true or not. It ought to be true." On looking through the Lambeth MS. 853, which Mr. Stubbs kindly handed to me in Lambeth Palace Library, I could not help saying, “I'll print it all, whether it contains early versions or late; it is a jolly little Manuscript" :-a chubby vellum quarto, written in a large, clear, upright hand, which looked at first sight fourteenth century, but which the Museum authorities whom I afterwards consulted put at about 1430 A.D. As nice a little volume as one would wish to handle; a pleasing contrast to the shabby, scrubby, paper Percy folio of two hundred years later that I am now working at. Accordingly, the whole MS. is in type for the Society, and I hope members have no cause to regret it, for though earlier versions of some of the poems are no doubt in existence,-I have printed one at least sixty years older at pp. 106, 108, 110, 112, to show how the late text has changed1-yet the Lambeth MS. has given us the better text of The Complaint of Christ, in "Political, Religious, and Love Poems," (E.E.T.S., 1866,) a better text of "The Parliament of Devils" than that printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and the best texts yet printed of the far-famed Stans Puer ad Mensam, "How the Good Wife taught her Daughter," and "How the Wise Man taught his Son," &c. : these, besides other poems of considerable beauty and interest in the present volume, and the other Texts I 1 Two words at least of the earlier text-sauzten and vnsauzte, "to reconcile" and "unreconciled, at enmity," p. 108, 11. 37-38, were unknown to the late scribe, and were changed by him to soften and unsoft. |